Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust

Supporting stakeholder engagement in conservation and management: we facilitated and promoted dialogue and collaboration among fishermen, conservationists, scientists, local government, and legislators. We provided resources through our monthly buoy bulletin newsletter, website, and meetings, and continued to support fishermen's education through the marine resource education program (mrep). Stats: 82 members of the fishing community directly participated in our programs; 627 stakeholders received resources via the monthly buoy bulletin newsletter

Sustaining local families and fisheries: we continued our monterey bay community seafood program to provide healthy, sustainably harvested seafood to community members in need of food assistance, along with more than $82k in economic support to our local fishermen, food workers, and seafood businesses. As a direct result of this program, second harvest of santa cruz county has made a commitment to source local seafood year-round. We are continuing our connections in the local food system network and hold a seat on the central coast resilient food systems co-op as one of two representatives of seafood. Stats: $82k raised to purchase 9k pounds of local seafood; 24.2k seafood meals donated; 28 fishermen and 35 food workers supported.

Strengthening the viability of commercial fishing businesses in monterey: we provided technical assistance, tools, and resources to strengthen fishing businesses and help fishermen navigate regulations. We continued our quota leasing program, protecting local access to sustainable groundfish fishing rights, and saving fishermen thousands of dollars in lease fees. Through our partnership with california farmlink, we increased fishermen's access to technical assistance and loans and explored succession planning for retiring fishermen and new entrants. We advocated to state and federal legislators for infrastructure improvements and the need to support fishing community resilience. Stats: 10 fishermen received direct technical assistance; 178k pounds of groundfish was leased locally; 2.4k views of web resources for fishing businesses.